How to share your unfinished Weebly website
If you know you’re going to be brave enough to ask others to take a look at your Weebly website as you’re designing it, there are things to know in advance — even before you create the website and choose a theme. You’re going to want to know these tips and tricks before getting started to give your reviewers the best access to your “under construction” website.
Reasons to share your website
While you may already know why you’ll want to share early versions of your website, there may be other benefits to sharing your website that are new. Here are some reasons I can think of for sharing your website before it’s ready to launch to the public.
Sharing with your besties
Whether you’re creating your own website or having someone design it for you, the main reason you'll want to share it is to get feedback about the design, the content, and the usability of your website. Clients I've worked with have shared their unfinished websites with trusted friends, colleagues, their grown children, their spouses, and their knowledgeable neighbors. I've even had clients who had full advisory teams with whom they shared their websites as they were being developed.
Sharing with potential business partners
Another reason to share a website with a select few is to test-market the website to a chosen group of potential investors, partners, distributors, clients, and influencers. Websites are usually close to being finished when this type of review is done, but the feedback from these early viewers can change the direction of the design or even the product or service offered by the business.
Sharing with yourself
The other reason to make your website available for sharing is so you can see the website as it will appear to visitors. You should always preview the website as you're designing it with the Desktop/Mobile preview windows in your website editor. But you'll find that the actual website can look very different when viewed on small vs. large monitors, laptops, tablets, and a variety of phone sizes. Always check your website on several different devices to make your website usable to as many people as possible.
Creating your website for sharing
With a Weebly website, your best strategy for sharing your website starts when you create it.
Create the site without paying for a plan
When you create a site, you’re prompted to select a theme, and then you'll be prompted to select a domain name.
If you're not ready to make a domain or website purchase, come up with a domain name that will include weebly.com at the end, such as kerryathompsonsite.weebly.com. That’s called a subdomain of weebly.com. Try using your business name and add weebly.com after it or do a search of several similar names until you find one that's available.
After returning to the editor, click the Publish button to make the site available.
Prepare to share
With your Weebly website open, click Settings - General.
Write down the Site Address.
Pro tip: Hiding your site with a password
If you haven't upgraded to a paid plan, your website can be found by anyone at the site address. If you have used a Weebly subdomain, like kerryathompsonsite.weebly.com, the site is harder to find than using a regular domain, but it is still possible to find it. To keep your website under wraps more completely, you can choose to add a Site Password on the Settings - General page. When you save the password, you'll be prompted to upgrade to a paid Weebly plan.
The Big Reveal: Sharing your website with others
Give your reviewers the Weebly site address and tell them to open the website in a browser. If you added a password, tell them to type in the password you assigned to view the site.
Get ready to hear what others have to say
This is undoubtedly the most difficult part of the process. I’ve had clients share their websites with others and it has changed the direction of the design altogether. While it may make you wince, as long as your reviewers are people you trust and are representative of your ideal customer, the questions, suggestions, and feedback that result from sharing your website will be valuable for your business. But as the business owner, you get to decide which suggestions you put into place and which ones you politely decline.
